Danish Radio and Television Board: Decision regarding regulation on incitement to hatred

The following is the previous decision by Danish Medie secretariatet concerning Turkish complaints. [SaveRojTV]

The Danish Radio and Television Board has on the 20th of April 2005 taken a decision regarding a complaint against ROJ TV. The complaint, from the Turkish Embassy in Copenhagen, was that ROJ TV a Kurdish satellite television channel registered in Denmark has broadcast programmes, which incite hatred and fear among people by supporting the organisation PKK/KADEK/KONGRA-GEL, which is included in the EU Council decision of 2 April 2004 as a terrorist organisation. Supplementary documentation to the complaint included videotaped examples of news broadcast by ROJ TV.The Radio and Television Board has taken the decision according to article 11, section 3, in the Executive Order no. 1174 dated 17 December 2002: Programmes may not in any way incite to hatred based on race, sex, religion, nationality or sexual orientation.The Boards decision of 21 April 2005 is that ROJ TV has not violated article 11, section 3. The Board found that the programmes contained normal news reporting about the fights between Kurdish guerrillas and the Turkish military and did not contain incitements to hatred. It was stressed that news reporting as a supply of information is not in itself incitement to hatred and that the possible effect on viewers of reporting a topic may depend on their political attitudes.Furthermore, the complaint concerned ROJ TVs presumed relations to PKK and to MED TV (whose UK licence was withdrawn by British authorities) and Medya TV (to whom French authorities refused to grant a licence). Since these organisational matters are not regulated in the Broadcast Act the complaint about these matters was referred to the police.

source:Radio and Television Board Denmark
http://www.mediesekretariatet.dk/mediasecretariat.htm
jf@mediesekretariat.dk